The Theory of Motion According to Newton, Leibniz, and Huyghens

Abstract

Newton's theory of motion has a considerably greater influence upon the historical development of the problem of motion than the doctrine of his opponents, Leibniz and Huyghens. Nevertheless, it is ironic that Newton, who enriched science so immensely by his physical discoveries, at the same time largely hindered the development of its conceptual foundation. However fertile his optical discoveries, his emission theory of light delayed the acceptance of the wave theory, formulated with great insight by his contemporary Huyghens, by about a century. However far reaching Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation, his theory of mechanics arrested the analysis of the problems of space and time for more than two centuries, despite the fact that Leibniz, who was his contemporary, had demonstrated a much deeper understanding of the nature of space and time. Only today, when physics has finally abandoned Newton's point of view in optics and mechanics, can we do justice to the two men whose unfortunate fate it was to have possessed insights that were too sophisticated for the intellectual climate of their times. A man's historical influence depends not only upon the profundity of his ideas, but also upon his having the good fortune to offer ideas which are in tune with the spirit of the times. It seems that the faculty of abstraction in Newton's time had not reached a sufficiently advanced stage to permit the ascendancy of the discoveries of a Leibniz or a Huyghens concerning the relativity of motion. Even Kant's theory of space and time, formulated almost a century later on the basis of Newton's mechanics,1 constitutes a regression in comparison with the discernment and precision of Leibniz' formulations. Leibniz had in the main advanced beyond the employment of such vague terms as `the ideality of time and space', although he used them occasionally. Even Kant's early essay, `Neuer Lehrbegriff der Bewegung and Ruhe' (1758), which contains the most extensive elaboration of the concept of relative motion and which makes his critical doctrine of space appear like a return to Newton, falls short of the level achieved by Leibniz.